This invention relates to a system for fabricating a medicine envelope for containing a medicine given by a hospitals or pharmacy according to a medical prescription, especially having thereon written information about the contained medicine.
Conventional medicine envelopes containing medicines given by hospitals or pharmacies according to medical prescriptions had very simple information such as types of medicines, and durations of use of the medicines, and ways of medicines, which is written directly on the envelopes or written on seals stuck onto the envelopes. With these envelopes, however, information given to patients about the medicines was insufficient, and there was the possibility of misleading patients to take the medicines erroneously.
As a countermeasure of this problem, Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 3030269 discloses a medicine envelope having a print of names of prescribed medicines, information about their effects, their pictures, time for taking the medicines and their doses.
Since the envelope disclosed in the above publication demonstrates much more information about the contained medicines, the patient can readily understand effects of the medicines and can take the medicines properly without misunderstanding the time and dose of each medicine. Additionally, since information about the medicines is directly printed on the envelope, pharmacists can prepare medicines for individual patients more easily and quickly.
The existing envelope proposed in the above publication, however, has a print of the column for the patient""s name, column for instructions about ways of potion of the medicines, column for indicating names and information of the medicines, column for demonstrating pictures of the medicines, and column for indicating the time for taking the medicines and their doses, and required statements are shown in these columns.
Although the above publication does not describe details about ways of printing, its basic concept is to prepare a computerized pattern having various columns, install it into a general-purpose computer (such as personal computer) or a word processor and visually display it, then input necessary statements according to the prescription through the key board or from a storage of the computer, and print the input data onto a surface of an envelope with a printer.
Therefore, an operator has to input pieces of information from the prescription into predetermined columns, individually, while watching the display, and this mode of input operation requires much time and labor.
Especially, for the purpose of preventing misuse of medicines, different medicine envelopes have to be used for different groups of medicines which are classified according to grouping parameters like names of doctors who make the prescriptions, types of medicines (internal use, temporary use, external use), duration of use of medicines, ways of potion, and so forth.
Therefore, the operator has to input information about medicines and others shown on the prescription dividing it into one for an envelope and the other for another envelope. This mode of operation is much complicated and liable to invite errors, and hence needs a later job of confirmation.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a system capable of quickly and easily fabricating a medicine envelope with an accurate print of various information about medicines.
A medicine envelope preparation system according to the invention comprises: a storage device whish stores various information about medicines as electronic data; an input device for inputting signals to extract part of the information; a grouping program for grouping the extracted part of information into groups each for a single medicine envelope according to predetermined grouping parameters; and an envelope printer for printing visual data corresponding to each of the groups of the extracted part of information on a single medicine envelope.
In the medicine envelope preparation system according to the invention, distinction about types of medicines is used as one of the grouping parameters, and the envelope printer may be a color printer which can print all or part of the printed matters on medicine envelopes in different colors such that the color on envelopes for one of the groups be different from the colors on envelopes for the others groups. In this manner, envelopes for different groups can be distinguished more easily, and this contributes to preventing erroneous use of the medicines and at the same time enabling quick and precise preparation of the medicines for individual patients.
The medicine envelope preparation system according to the invention may further comprise an additional printer for printing a sheet of instructions about medicines which are contained in the extracted part of information. In this case, a medicine instruction sheet for giving instructions about medicines contained in a medicine envelope can be printed simultaneously with the printing of the envelope.